Thaddeus of Warsaw Part 60

"Was your mother indeed Therese Sobieski?"

Thaddeus, still more astonished, replied in the affirmative. Sir Robert threw himself back on the chair with a deep groan. Hardly knowing what he did, the count rose from his seat and advanced towards him. On his approach, Sir Robert stretched out his hand, and, with a look and tone of agony, said, "Who was your father?" He then, without waiting for a reply, covered his convulsed features with his handkerchief. The baronet's agitation, which now shook him like an earthquake, became contagious. Thaddeus gazed at him with a palsying uncertainty in his heart; laying his hand on his bewildered brain, he answered, "I know not; yet I fear I must believe him to be the Earl of Tinemouth. But here is his picture." With an almost disabling tremor he unclasped it from his neck where his mother's last blessing had placed it, and touching the spring which held it in its little gold case in the manner of a watch, he gave it open to Sir Robert, who had started from his seat at the name of the earl. The moment the baronet's eyes rested on the miniature, he fell senseless upon the chair.

Thaddeus, hardly more alive, sprinkled some water on his face, and with throbbing temples and a bleeding heart stood in wordless expectation over him. Such excessive emotion told him that something more than Sir Robert's hatred of the Polanders had stimulated his late conduct. Too earnest for an explanation to ring for a.s.sistance, he rejoiced to see, by the convulsion of the baronet's features and the heaving of his chest, that animation was returning. In a few minutes he opened his eyes, but when he met the anxious gaze of Thaddeus, he closed them as suddenly. Rising from his seat, he staggered against the chimney-piece, exclaiming, "Oh G.o.d, direct me!"

Thaddeus, whose conjectures were now wrought almost to wildness, followed him, and whilst his exhausted frame was ready to sink to the earth, he implored him to speak.

"Sir Robert," cried he, "if you know anything of my family, if you know anything of my father, I beseech you to answer me. Or only tell me: am I so wretched as to be the son of Lord Tinemouth?"

The violence of the count's emotions during this agonizing address totally overcame him; before he finished speaking, his limbs withdrew their support, and he dropped breathless against the side of the chair.

Sir Robert turned hastily round. He saw him sunk, like a beautiful flower, bruised and trampled on by the foot of him who had given it root. Unable to make any evasive reply to this last appeal of virtue and of nature, he threw himself with a burst of tears upon his neck, and exclaimed, "Wretch that I have been! Oh, Sobieski! I am thy father. Dear, injured son of the too faithful Therese!"

The first words which carried this avowal to the heart of Thaddeus deprived it of motion, and when Sir Robert expected to receive the returning embrace of his son, he found him senseless in his arms.

The cries of the baronet brought Mr. Middleton and the servants into the room. When the former saw the state of the count, and perceived the agonized position of his patron, (who was supporting and leaning over his son,) the honest man declared that he expected nothing less from the gentleman's disobedience of his orders. The presence of the servants having recalled Sir Robert's wandering faculties, he desired them to remove the invalid with the greatest care back to his chamber. Following them in silence, when they had laid their charge on the bed, he watched in extreme but concealed suspense till Mr.

Middleton once more succeeded in restoring animation to his patient.

The moment the count unclosed his eyes, they fixed themselves on his father. He drew the hand which held his to his lips. The tears of paternal love again bathed the cheeks of Sir Robert; he felt how warm at his heart was the affection of his deserted son. Making a sign for Mr. Middleton to leave the room, who obeyed, he bent his streaming eyes upon the other hand of Thaddeus, and, in a faltering voice, "Can you pardon me?"

Thaddeus threw himself on his father's bosom, and wept profusely; then raising Sir Robert's clasped hands to his, whilst his eloquent eyes seemed to search the heavens, he said, "My dear, dear mother loved you to her latest hour; and I have all my mother's heart.

Whatever may have been his errors, I love and honor my father."

Sir Robert strained him to his breast. After a pause, whilst he shook the tears from his venerated cheeks, he resumed--"Certain, my dear son, that you require repose, and a.s.sured that you will not find it until I have offered some apology for my unnatural conduct, I will now explain the circ.u.mstances which impelled my actions, and drew distress upon that n.o.ble being, your mother."

Sir Robert hesitated a moment to recover breath, and then, with the verity of a grateful penitence, commenced.

"Keep your situation," added he, putting down Thaddeus, who at this opening was raising himself, "I shall tell my melancholy story with less pain if your eyes be not upon me. I will begin from the first."

The baronet, with frequent agitated pauses, proceeded to relate what may be more succinctly expressed as follows: Very early in life he had attached himself to Miss Edith Beaufort, the only sister of the late Admiral Beaufort, who at that time was pursuing his chosen brave career as post-captain in the British navy. By the successive deaths of their parents, they had been left young to the guardianship of Sir Fulke Somerset and their maternal aunt, his then accomplished lady: she and their deceased mother, the Lady Grace Beaufort, having been sisters--the two celebrated beautiful daughters of Robert Earl Studeley of Warwick.

Sir Fulke's family by the amiable twin of the Lady Grace were Robert (who afterwards succeeded him) and Dorothy his only daughter. But he had a son by a former marriage with the brilliantly-endowed widow of a long-resident governor in the East, who having died on his voyage home to England, on her landing she found herself the sole inheritrix of his immense wealth. She possessed charms of person as well as riches, and as soon as "her weeds" could be laid aside, she became the admired wife of the "gay and gallant" Sir Fulke Somerset. Within the twelve subsequent months she presented him with a son and heir, soon to be her own too; for though she lived three or four years after his birth, her health became so delicate that she never bore another child, but gradually declined, and ultimately expired while apparently in a gentle sleep.

Sir Fulke mourned his due time "in the customary suit of solemn black;" but he was a man of a lofty and social spirit, by no means inclined to be disconsolate, and held "a fair help-mate" to be an indispensable appendage to his domestic state. In this temper, (just before the election of a new parliament, when contending interests were running very close,) he obtained the not less eagerly disputed hand of Lady Arabella Studeley, whose elder sister (as has been mentioned) had made a magnificent marriage, only a year or two before, with John of Beaufort, the lord of the n.o.ble domain of Beaufort in the Weald of Kent--a lineal endowment from his princely ancestor, John of Gaunt. This ill.u.s.trious pair dwelt on the land, like its munificent owners in the olden times, revered and beloved; and they were the parents of their two equally-honored representatives-- Guy, afterwards Admiral Beaufort, and Edith, who subsequently became the adored wife of her also tenderly-beloved cousin, Robert Somerset.

But before that fondly-antic.i.p.ated event took place, the young lover had to pa.s.s through a path of thorns, some of which pierced him to the end. From his childhood to manhood, he saw little of Algernon, his elder brother, who always seemed to him more like an occasional brilliant phantom, alighting amongst them, than a dear member of the family coming delightedly to cheer and to share his paternal home.

Algernon was either at Eaton school, or at one of the universities, or travelling somewhere on the continent; and at all these places, or from them all, he became the enchanted theme of every tongue.

Meanwhile, Robert--though, perhaps, equally endowed by nature yet certainly of a milder radiance--was the object of so apprehensive a solicitude in his gentle mother's breast for the puritas well as the intellectual accomplishments of her son, that she obtained Sir Fulke's reluctant consent to his being brought up in what is called "a home education;" that is, under the especial personal care of the best private tutors, and which were found to the great credit of her judgment. He showed an ardent devotedness to his studies; and though, like his mother, he was one of the mildest of human beings in his dealings with those around him, yet his aspirations towards high attainments were as energetic as they were noiseless, and ever on steady wind soaring upward. Robert Somerset was then unconsciously forming himself for what he afterwards became--the boast of the country of his birth, the glory of England, to whose prosperity he dedicated all his n.o.ble talents, showing what it is to be a true English country gentleman. Being alike "the oak or laurel" of "Old England's fields and groves."

"With sickle or with sword, Or bardic minstrelsy!"

he was permitted to pa.s.s a term or two at Oxford, where he acquitted himself with honor, particularly in the cla.s.sics, to the repeated admiration of their then celebrated professor, the late Thomas Warton. But the young student was also fond of rural pursuits and domestic occupations. He lived mostly at home, enjoying the gentle solace of elegant modern literature and the graces of music, with the ever blameless delights of an accomplished female society, at the head of which his revered mother had presided, accompanied by his lively sister Dorothy and the sweet Edith Beaufort, whom he had gradually learned to love like his own soul. His heart became yet more closely knit to her when his beloved parent died, which sad event occurred about a year after the death of Edith's own mother, who on her widowhood had continued to live more with her sister, Lady Arabella Somerset, than at her bereaved home. Edith's filial sorrow was renewed in the loss of her maternal aunt, and her tenderest sympathy reciprocated the tears of her son. Their hearts blended together in those tears, and both felt that "they were comforted."

Time did not long pa.s.s on before the happy Robert communicated their mutual attachment to his father, pet.i.tioning for his consent to woo for the hand of her whose heart he had already gained. But the baronet, in some surprise at what he heard, refused to give his sanction to any such premature engagement, first, on account of the applicant's "extreme youth;" and second, being a younger scion of his house, it might not be deemed well of in the world should he, the guardian of his niece and her splendid fortune, show so much haste to bestow her on his comparatively portionless son. The baronet, with some of his parliamentary ac.u.men, drew another comparison, which touched the disappointed lover with a feeling almost of despair. He compared what he denominated his romantic fancies for "woods and wilds," and book-worm pursuits in the old crypts of the castle or the college, with the distinguished consideration held by his travelled brother in courts and councils, whether abroad or at home, closing the parallel by telling him "to follow Algernon's example, and become more like a man of some account amongst men before he dared pretend to a hand of so much importance as that of the heiress of Beaufort."

Robert was standing silent and dismayed, as one struck by a thunder- flash, when his brother (who had been only a month arrived from a long revisit to the two Sicilies) suddenly entered his father's library, as Sir Fulke had again resumed his discourse with even more severity. At sight of the animated object of his contrasting eulogy, he instantly described to his new auditor what had been mutually said, and referred the subject to him.

"Romance, indeed! whether in merry Sherwood, with hound and horn, or with gentle dames in bower and hall, you have had enough of, my brother," replied the gay-spirited traveller. "Neither men nor women like philandering after deer or doe, or a lady's slipper, beyond the greenwood season. So I say, for the glory of your manhood up and away! Abroad, abroad! My father is right. That is the only ground for such a race and guerdon as you aspire to. I admire your taste, and not less your ambition, my brave boy. Do not thwart him, Sir Fulke,"

added he, to the baronet, who began to frown: "let him enter the lists with the boldest of us; faint heart never won fair lady! So, forward, Robert! and give me another sweet sister to love and to cherish as I do our blithe little Dora."

At this far from unwelcome advice, Robert smiled and sighed; but the smile swallowed up the sigh, for his soul kindled with hope. His father smiled also; the cloud of a stern authority had pa.s.sed from his brow, and before that now perfectly reconciled party rose, it was decided that Robert should make immediate preparations for commencing a regulated course of continental travels, the route to be drawn out by his brother and his expenses in the tour to be liberally supplied by his father. The length of the probation was not then thought on, at least not mentioned. Shortly afterwards, when Robert hastened from the library to communicate what had pa.s.sed to the beloved object of the discussion, he left his father and his brother together to think and to plan all the rest for him.

But Edith Beaufort wept when she heard of the separation; her heart failed within her. For since her first coming under the roof of her guardian uncle, she had never been without seeing her brother-like cousin beyond a few days or weeks at most. He was now going to be banished (and, it was a.s.serted, for her sake too) into far distant countries, and for an indefinite period--months, perhaps years. And these saddening thoughts made her weep afresh, though silently; for her full-flowing tears were soft and noiseless, like the heart from whence they sprung. Robert, with all his now sanguine expectations, sought to cheer her, but in vain. She felt an impression, that should he go, they would never meet again. But she did not betray that feeling to him; yet the infection of her despondency, by its continuance, so wrought on his own consequent depressed spirits, that when his father announced to him that his absence must be for two or three years at least, he ventured to remonstrate, beseeching that it might be limited to the shorter term of two years. The baronet derided the proposal, with many words of contempt towards the urgent pleader. Robert withheld from disclosing to the too often hard mind of his father that the proposition he so scorned had originated in the tender bosom of Edith Beaufort, and Sir Fulke's sarcasm fell so thick on the bending head of his son, that at last the insulted feelings of the generous lover became so indignant at the little confidence placed in the real manliness of his character, which had hitherto been found ever present when actually called for, that his heart began to swell to an almost uncontrollable exasperation, and while struggling to master himself from uttering the disrespectful retort risen to his lips, his brother again accidentally entered the room, and by giving Robert the moment to pause, happily rescued his tottering duty from that regretful offence.

As soon as Algernon appeared, the baronet resumed his sarcastic tone, in a rapid recapitulation of Robert's retrograde request. Algernon again took up the cause of his brother, and, with his usual tact, gained the victory, by the dexterous gayety with which he pleaded for the young noviciate in all the matters for which he was to be sent so far afield to learn. At last the conference ended by Sir Fulke agreeing to a proposition from his eldest son,--that the time for this foreign tutelage might possibly expire within the second year, should the results evoked by the ambitious pa.s.sion of his youngest born be in any fair progress to fulfilment.

In little more than a week after this final arrangement, every preparation was finished for the wildly-contemplated tour. Robert had taken a heart-plighting adieu from his beloved Edith. But by his father's positive injunction, there was no engagement for a hereafter actual plighting of hands made between them. Yet their eloquent eyes, transparent through their mutual tears, vowed it to each other, and with silent prayers for his indeed early return, they parted.

When taking leave of his father, and receiving his directions relative to a correspondence with his family, permission was peremptorily denied him to hold any with his cousin Edith. He had learned enough lately to avoid all supplications to the paternal quarter, if he would not invite scorn as well as to receive disappointment. But Algernon whispered to him "that n.o.body should remain wholly _incognita_ to him in that house while he dipped pen in any one of the three hundred and sixty-five inkhorns under its awful towers!" Robert then bowed his farewell with a flushed cheek and grave respect to his father, but gratefully separated from his brother with a warm pressure of the hand. The old household servants blessed him as he pa.s.sed through the hall, and in a few minutes he found himself seated in the family post-chaise and four that was to convey him from the home of his youth and happy innocence, and, alas!

to return to it "an altered man."

When he reached Dover to embark, he fell in with the present Earl of Tinemouth, then Mr. Stanhope, sent abroad on a similar errand with himself. But Stanhope's was to forget a mistress--Somerset's to merit the one he sought. The two young men were kinsfolk by birth, and they now felt themselves so in severing from their parents. Stanhope was in high wrath against his, and he soon rekindled the already excited mind of Somerset to a responsive demonstration of resentment. They determined to show that "they were not such boys as to submit any further in pa.s.sive obedience to the stern authority dominating over them." Sir Fulke's particular charge against his son was a "womanish softness, unworthy his loftier s.e.x!" "Show him," cried Stanhope, that "you have the hardihood of a true man by an immediate act of independence. Let us travel together, kinsmen as we are, change our names, and let no one in England know anything about us during our tour except the two dear women on whose accounts we are thus transported!"

With these views they landed in France, gave themselves out to be brothers (which a certain resemblance in their persons corroborated), and called themselves Sackville. Agreeably amused with the novelties presented to them at almost every step of their tour from gay Paris to sentimental Italy, they proceeded pretty amicably until they reached Naples. There Mr. Stanhope involved himself in an intrigue with the only daughter of an old British officer, who had retired to that climate for his health. Somerset remonstrated on the villany of seducing an innocent girl, when he knew his heart and hand were pledged to another. Stanhope, enraged at finding a censor in a companion whom he had considered to be as headstrong as himself, ended the argument by drawing his sword, and if the servants of the hotel had not interfered, the affray would probably have terminated with one of their lives. Since that hour they never met. Mr. Stanhope fled from his shame and his bleeding friend, and, fearful of consequences, took temporary refuge in one of the Aonian Isles, not daring to proceed any further against the innocence of the poor officer's daughter, who had been thus rescued from becoming his victim!

When recovered from his wound, Robert Somerset (by some strange infatuation still retaining the name of Sackville) proceeded to Florence, in which interesting city, for works of art, ancient and modern, and the graces of cla.s.sic society, determining to stay some time, he rather sought than repelled the civilities of the inhabitants. Here he became acquainted with the palatine, and the lovely Countess Therese, his daughter. Her beauty pleased his taste; her gentle virtues and exquisite accomplishments affected both his heart and mind; and he often gazed on her with tenderness, when his fidelity to Edith Beaufort only meant him to convey a look of grateful admiration. The palatine honored England, and was prepared to esteem her sons wherever he might meet them; and very soon he became so attached to this apparently lonely young traveller, that he invited him to all the excursions he and his daughter made into the adjoining states, whether visiting them by the romantic scenery of the land-roads, or coasting the beautiful bays of the sublime sh.o.r.es on either side of those parts of the Mediterranean.

In the midst of this intimacy, as if she were aware of a friendship so hostile to his cousin's love, he suddenly ceased to receive any remembrance-messages from her to him, in the two last letters from his brother,--for he had never allowed himself to so brave his father's parting commands as to write to her himself. Desperate with jealousy of some unknown object supplanting him, he was on the point of setting off for home, to judge with his own eyes, when a large packet from England was put into his hands. On opening it he found a letter from Edith, on which his surprised and eager gaze had immediately fixed. Without looking on any of the rest, he broke the seal, and read, astounded by the contents, "that having for some time been led to consider the probable consequences to him, both from his father's better judgment and the ultimate opinion of the world, should he and she continue their pertinacious adherence to their childish attachment, she had tried to wean both him and herself from so rebellious a folly towards her revered guardian, his honored father; and trusting that the gradual shortening of her cousin-like messages to him, through his brother's letters, must have had the effect intended, she now had permission to write one herself to him, to convince him at once of the unreasonableness and danger of all such premature entanglements. For," she added, "soon after his departure, a journey to town had taught her to know her own heart.

She learned to feel that it was still at her disposal; and time did not long pa.s.s after she returned to the country before, having compared the object of her awakened taste with that of her former delusion, she persuaded her own better judgment to set a generous example to her ever-dear cousin Robert, by marrying where that judgment now pointed. And so, with the full consent of Sir Fulke (who she well knew had been totally averse to her marriage with his youngest son), she had yielded to the long love of his brother, which had been struggling in his manly bosom many agonizing months against his persistent fidelity to Robert, but whose sister she hoped to shortly become, as his affectionate Edith--then Somerset."

Having read this extraordinary epistle to the end, so monstrous in the character of its sentiments and its language, when compared with all he had hitherto known of the pure and simple mind from which it came, a terrible revulsion seized on his own, and, almost maddened with horror at every name in that letter, he foreswore his family forever! Hastening, as for one drop of heaven's dew upon his burning brain, to seek Therese Sobieski, he found her alone, and though without such aim when he rushed so frenzied into her presence, he besought her "to heal a miserable and broken heart, which could only be saved to endure any continuance of life by an acknowledgment that she loved him!" Alas! the avowal was too soon wrung from that tender and n.o.ble spirit! and yielding to a paroxysm of a rash and blinding revenge, he hurried her to a neighboring convent and secretly married her.

This most unrighteous act perpetrated, he in vain sought tranquillity. He was now stung within by a constant sense of increasing guilt. Before this act he was the injured party--injured by those in whom he had confided his dearest earthly happiness; and he could raise his head in conscious truth, though all his fondest hopes had been wrecked by their falsehood. But now he was the betrayer of a young and innocent heart, which had implicitly trusted in him. And he had insulted with a base and treacherous ingrat.i.tude, by that act of deceit, without excuse, the honor of her father, whose generous confidence had also been implicitly placed in him. But the effects of these scorpion reproaches in his bosom were not less destructive of her peace than of his own. He saw that his wedded Therese was unweariedly anxious to soothe the mysterious wanderings of his mind with her softest tenderness. But his thoughts were, indeed, far from her, ever hovering over the changed image of his so lately adored Edith--ever agonizing over the lightness of a conduct so unlike her former virgin delicacy, so unlike the clinging vows she breathed to him in their hour of boding separation!--ever execrating the perfidy of his brother, which had brought on him this distracting load of guilt and woe!

In this temper of alienation from all the world, a second packet from England was put into his hand. Again he saw Edith's writing; but he dropped it unopened, in horror of the signature he antic.i.p.ated would be appended to it. Roused by resentment towards him whose name he believed she then bore, he tore asunder the wax of a letter from his father, which was sealed with black. His eyes were speedily riveted to it. Sir Fulke, in the language of deep contrition, confessed a train of deception that petrified his son. He declared, with bitter invectives against himself, that all which had been communicated to that unhappy son relating to Edith and her intended marriage with Algernon had been devised by that unkind brother, and his no less unnatural father, for the treacherous purpose of that marriage.

Devoted to ambition for his own sake, as well as for that of his favorite son, Sir Fulke owned that he had from the first of Edith Beaufort's becoming his ward resolved on her union in due time with Algernon, in order to endow him, in addition to his own rich inheritance, with all the political influence attendant on the vast estate to which she was heiress, and so build up the family, in the consideration of government, to any pitch of coroneted rank their high-reaching parent might choose to reclaim.

With many prayers for pardon from Heaven and the cruelly-injured Robert, the wretched father acknowledged that this confession was wrung from him by the sudden death of his eldest son, who having been thrown off his horse on a heap of stones in the high-road, after three days of severe bodily and mental suffering, now lay a sadly- disfigured corpse, under the vainly mourning blazonry of his house, in the darkened hall of his ancestors. The disconsolate narrator then added, "that in contrite repentance his son had conjured him, with his dying breath, to confess the falsehood of all that had pa.s.sed to the grossly-abused Robert;" amongst which, was Algernon turning to the account of his own designs every confidence imparted to him by his brother, in his _incognito_ movements, and awakened intimacy with the n.o.ble Sarmatian family at Florence. And from these unsuspected sources, this false friend and kinsman had contrived to throw out hints of his brother's reported sliding heart to the shrinking object of his own base and perfidious pa.s.sion. At last, believing Robert to be unfaithful, she sunk into a depression of spirits which Sir Fulke thought would be easy to work to an a.s.sent, in mere reckless melancholy, to the union he sought. With that object, and to break the knot at once by a trenchant blow on Robert's side, Algernon forged that letter in Edith Beaufort's handwriting which had announced so unblushingly her preparations for an immediate marriage with the eldest son.

"But," continued Sir Fulke, "death has put an end to this unnatural rivalry. And my poor girl, undeceived in her opinion of you, longs to see you, and to give you that hand which your ill-fated brother and infatuated father so unjustly detained from you. You are now my only son, the only prop of my house, the only comfort of my old age! My son, do not abandon to his remorse and sorrow your only parent."

On receipt of this packet, in a consternation of amazement, and a soul divided between rekindled love in all its fires and pity and honor towards her he had betrayed before the altar of heaven, Robert Somerset sacrificed both to his imperious pa.s.sion. He adored the woman on whose account he had left the country, and though every tie, sacred and just, bound him to the tender and faithful wife he must forsake to regain that idol, he at once consigned her to the full horrors of desertion and hastened to England.

"Disgraceful to relate!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sir Robert, putting his hand over his face, "I married Edith Beaufort, while in our deepest mourning, but at Somerset, as the place farthest from general notice. My father, eager to efface as fast as possible from my mind and hers all recollection of his past conduct towards us, had prepared everything splendid, though private, for our union; and in her blissful, restored possession, I forgot for a while Therese and her agonies.

But when my dear Pembroke first saw the light, when I pressed him to my heart, it seemed as if in the same instant a dagger pierced it.

When I would have breathed a blessing over him, the conviction struck me that I durst not--that I had deluded the mother who gave him birth, and that at some future period he might have cause to curse the author of his existence.

"Well," continued the baronet, wiping his forehead, "though the birth of this boy conjured up the image of your mother, to haunt me day and night, I never could summon moral courage to inquire of her destiny after I had left her. When the troubles of Poland commenced, what a dreadful terror seized me! The successes of their allied enemies, and the consequent distress and persecution of the chief n.o.bility, overwhelmed me with apprehension. I knew not but that many, like the _n.o.blesse_ of France, might be forced to abandon their country; and the bare idea of meeting your grandfather, or the injured Therese, in England, precipitated me into a nervous state that menaced my life. I became abstracted and seriously ill, was forbidden all excitements; hence easily avoided the sight of newspapers; and, on the plea you have heard, my family were withheld from speaking on any public subjects that manifestly gave me pain. But I could not prevent the tongues of our visitors from discoursing on a theme which at that period interested every thinking mind. I heard of the valiant Kosciusko, the good Stanislaus, and the palatine Sobieski, with his brave grandson, spoken of in the same breath. I durst not surmise who this grandson was; I dared not ask--I dreaded to know.

"At length," added the agitated father, quickening his voice, "the idol of my heart--she for whom I had sacrificed my all of human probity, perhaps my soul's eternal peace--died in my arms. Where could a wretch like me turn for consolation? I had forfeited all right to it from Heaven or earth. But at last a benignant spirit seemed to breathe on me, and I bent beneath the stroke with humility; for I embraced it as the just chastis.e.m.e.nt of a crime which till then, even in the midst of my married felicity, had often pressed on my dearest feelings like the hand of death. I repeat, I bore this chastening trial with the resignation I have described. But when, two years afterwards, my eye fell by accident upon the name of Sobieski in one of the public papers, I could not withdraw it; my sight was fascinated as if by a rattle-snake. In one column I read how bravely the palatine fell, and in the next the dreadful fate of his daughter.

She was revenged!" cried Sir Robert, eagerly grasping the hand of Thaddeus, who could not restrain the groan that burst from his breast. "For nearly three months I was deprived of that reason which had abused her n.o.ble nature.

"When I recovered my senes," continued he, in a calmer tone, "and found I had so fatally suffered the time of any rest.i.tution to her to go by, I began to torture my remorseful heart because that I had not, immediately on the death of my too much loved Edith, hastened to Poland, and besought Therese's pardon from her ever-generous heart.

But this vivid approach to a sincere repentance was soon obliterated by the consideration that, the Countess Sobieski having had a prior claim to my name, such rest.i.tution on my part must have illegitimatized my darling Pembroke, his dying mother's fondest bequeathment to a father's arms.

"It was this fearful conviction," exclaimed Sir Robert, a sudden horror, indeed, distracting his before affectionate eye, "that caused all my barbarian cruelty. When my dear and long-believed only son described the danger from which you had rescued him, when he told me that Therese had fostered him with a parent's tenderness, I was probed to the heart. But when he added that the young Count Sobieski was now an alien from his country, and relying on my friendship for a home, my terror was too truly manifested. Horror drove all natural remorse from my soul. I thought an avenging power had sent my deserted child to discover his father, to claim his rights, and to publish me as a disgrace to the name I had stolen from him. And when I saw my innocent Pembroke, even to his knees, pet.i.tioning for the man who I believed had come to undo him, I became almost deranged.

May the Lord of mercy pardon the fury of that derangement! For under that temper," added he, putting the trembling hand of Thaddeus to his streaming eyes, "I drove my first-born to be a wanderer on the face of the earth, not for his own crimes, but for those of his father; and Heaven justly punished in the crime the sin of my injustice. When I thought that evidence of my shame was divided from me by an insuperable barrier, when I believed that the ocean would soon separate me from my fears, a righteous Providence brought thee before me, forlorn and expiring. It was the son of Therese Sobieski I had exposed to such wretchedness. It was the cherished of her heart I had delivered to the raging elements! Oh, Thaddeus, my son," cried he, "can I be forgiven for all this, in this world or in the next?"

"Oh, my father!" returned Thaddeus, with a modest, but a pathetic energy, "I am thy son! thy happy son, in such acknowledgment!